Days of future past
Like many monsters Taliban got a life of their own, independent and evolving in ways undreamed of by their creators
The writer is editorial consultant at The Express Tribune, news junkie, bibliophile, cat lover and occasional cyclist
Let me begin with a cautionary word — some reading this will be experts on Afghanistan, well brace yourselves because there is going to be some monumental simplification in the paragraphs ahead.
By the time I left Afghanistan in May 2001 the Taliban were getting the hang of governance. They had been helped in large part if unwittingly and sometimes unwillingly by a bureaucracy that had for the most part stayed at their desks. The men and occasional woman who pushed the pens that kept the state — sort of — rolling, albeit on three rather than the requisite four, wheels.
Most Fridays if I was in Kabul I took tea after prayers with a prominent Taliban figure, or at least prominent in Western eyes, who one day said something that took me aback — “We never expected to win.” He explained that he and virtually all the rest of the Taliban groups that had eventually established what they called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 1996 — had not expected to survive. This is a gross compression of a complex conflict but the point he was making was that there was no expectation that they would be required to actually run a country having prevailed militarily. None of those doing the fighting had any experience of governance beyond the purely local systems in the towns and villages they came from.
So they used what they knew and for what they did not made it up as they went along. It was messy, callous, brutal and deeply frustrating to those of us that worked in the numerous NGOs that were constantly juggling ethical positions and humanitarian imperatives to try and deliver their core services. But by the turn of the century there was a sense that order mostly prevailed. It was an order imposed under what many would consider a reign of terror, a kind of disciplined barbarity, but order it was.
Then there was 9/11 and it all came tumbling down — except that it didn’t. The Taliban can be remarkably pragmatic when necessary, and they mostly went home when the American-led invasion bundled them out. The Northern Alliance took Kabul in November 2001 and in many ways it has been downhill ever since.
Instead of summarising the events of the last 15 years let us instead take a look at where things are now in Afghanistan, if briefly — and it does not look good. Not good at all.
The Taliban directly control about 30 per cent of the country, and are contesting another 30 per cent. The province of Helmand is eventually going to fall to them. They have established themselves right across the country, but are at their weakest in the west. The Afghan National Army is gradually disintegrating and not so gradually in some parts of the country. The Kabul government, despite being democratically elected is a weak and feeble creature riven by tribal and sectarian rivalries that are centuries old. And there are no knights in armour waiting over the horizon.
Anecdotally in October 1963 the outgoing Prime Minister of the UK Harold Macmillan gave his successor Alec Douglas-Home some prescient advice. “My dear boy,” said he “as long as you don’t invade Afghanistan you’ll be absolutely fine.” Considering that the British suffered one of their worst military defeats at the hands of Afghans who also, arguably, bested the Russians and now the British (again), the Americans and a basket of other nations that gave up blood and treasure to fail ignominiously — this was advice well given.
The current mantra is ‘an Afghan solution to Afghan problems’ which is little more than code for ‘we are going to help you fix this and this is how we want you to do it’. From the outset the Taliban were proxies for other players, and originally something of a hybrid constructed at least in part by Pakistan in collusion with the Americans. But like many monsters they have got a life of their own, independent and evolving in ways undreamed of by their creators, and we arrive at today when, just possibly, the Afghan Taliban are the solution to the Afghan problem. With that chilly thought I bid you Happy New Year.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 31st, 2015.
By the time I left Afghanistan in May 2001 the Taliban were getting the hang of governance. They had been helped in large part if unwittingly and sometimes unwillingly by a bureaucracy that had for the most part stayed at their desks. The men and occasional woman who pushed the pens that kept the state — sort of — rolling, albeit on three rather than the requisite four, wheels.
Most Fridays if I was in Kabul I took tea after prayers with a prominent Taliban figure, or at least prominent in Western eyes, who one day said something that took me aback — “We never expected to win.” He explained that he and virtually all the rest of the Taliban groups that had eventually established what they called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 1996 — had not expected to survive. This is a gross compression of a complex conflict but the point he was making was that there was no expectation that they would be required to actually run a country having prevailed militarily. None of those doing the fighting had any experience of governance beyond the purely local systems in the towns and villages they came from.
So they used what they knew and for what they did not made it up as they went along. It was messy, callous, brutal and deeply frustrating to those of us that worked in the numerous NGOs that were constantly juggling ethical positions and humanitarian imperatives to try and deliver their core services. But by the turn of the century there was a sense that order mostly prevailed. It was an order imposed under what many would consider a reign of terror, a kind of disciplined barbarity, but order it was.
Then there was 9/11 and it all came tumbling down — except that it didn’t. The Taliban can be remarkably pragmatic when necessary, and they mostly went home when the American-led invasion bundled them out. The Northern Alliance took Kabul in November 2001 and in many ways it has been downhill ever since.
Instead of summarising the events of the last 15 years let us instead take a look at where things are now in Afghanistan, if briefly — and it does not look good. Not good at all.
The Taliban directly control about 30 per cent of the country, and are contesting another 30 per cent. The province of Helmand is eventually going to fall to them. They have established themselves right across the country, but are at their weakest in the west. The Afghan National Army is gradually disintegrating and not so gradually in some parts of the country. The Kabul government, despite being democratically elected is a weak and feeble creature riven by tribal and sectarian rivalries that are centuries old. And there are no knights in armour waiting over the horizon.
Anecdotally in October 1963 the outgoing Prime Minister of the UK Harold Macmillan gave his successor Alec Douglas-Home some prescient advice. “My dear boy,” said he “as long as you don’t invade Afghanistan you’ll be absolutely fine.” Considering that the British suffered one of their worst military defeats at the hands of Afghans who also, arguably, bested the Russians and now the British (again), the Americans and a basket of other nations that gave up blood and treasure to fail ignominiously — this was advice well given.
The current mantra is ‘an Afghan solution to Afghan problems’ which is little more than code for ‘we are going to help you fix this and this is how we want you to do it’. From the outset the Taliban were proxies for other players, and originally something of a hybrid constructed at least in part by Pakistan in collusion with the Americans. But like many monsters they have got a life of their own, independent and evolving in ways undreamed of by their creators, and we arrive at today when, just possibly, the Afghan Taliban are the solution to the Afghan problem. With that chilly thought I bid you Happy New Year.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 31st, 2015.